With Fists and Love : Boxing Coach Fights to Divert Youths From Gangs, Crime

Former boxer Ray Espinoza always liked a good fight. So the 6-foot-4, 235-pound ex-con challenged six tough youths hanging out at a corner near his South Whittier home.

“Do you want to fight?” he asked.

Within a couple of days, Espinoza and the boys were in Espinoza’s garage. They put on boxing gloves and headgear and started pounding the heavy bag, peppering the speed bag. They jogged, jumped rope, sparred and shadowboxed.

Later, the boys entered boxing matches, and one 15-year-old with fewer than 15 matches under his belt has become a state amateur boxing champion.

Some of Espinoza’s boys also stopped drinking, smoking and skipping school. A few trickled into his Thursday Bible study sessions.

And even people with little interest in boxing began to notice that Espinoza was having some success diverting youths from gangs and crime. The Sheriff’s Department and community leaders have asked Espinoza to join them in developing a boxing program at the nearby sheriff’s training academy. Deputies would join Espinoza in offering boxing lessons and matches in an effort to persuade gang members and other youths to leave the streets for the gym.

Espinoza’s informal program, with about a dozen participants, is one of a handful of such boxing opportunities in local cities. Pico Rivera’s Manuel Avitea, another ex-boxer, has run a boxing club in that city since 1970. The city of Santa Fe Springs has had boxing classes for eight years.

If all goes as planned, however, the program run by the deputies and Espinoza would be the largest in Southeast Los Angeles County. It would serve more than 100 youths, most from unincorporated South Whittier, whose 55,000 residents and 600 identified gang members have little in the way of county services, parks and youth activities.

Oscar Llamas, the star of Espinoza’s stable, said he took up boxing in part because there were few other neighborhood activities for youths his age.

“There was nothing else to do. I used to get into a lot of fights,” said the small but tautly built Llamas. “Before I started boxing, I wanted to be in a gang.”

Llamas learned of the program from his older brother, Albert, one of the original six youths whom Espinoza challenged in March, 1990. Albert still works out occasionally with the dozen or so boys who use Espinoza’s garage. Newcomers arrive after hearing of the free training from friends. Sometimes Espinoza, a licensed boxing coach, has to turn people away for lack of space or equipment.

Espinoza first contacted the Sheriff’s Department while searching for a place to practice and for sponsors to help send his boxers to regional tournaments. He also approached the South Whittier Community Coordinating Council, a volunteer group.

Both organizations agreed to help. The council, with funding help from Supervisor Gloria Molina, offered to pay for a boxing ring and equipment. The Sheriff’s Department will donate the site and the deputy trainers.

“Along with boxing, we’re going to have tutoring available,” Deputy Tom Ctibor said. “The kids have to remain in school and they have to maintain a certain grade-point average.

“We’ll also take them to baseball and football games. Build a rapport. Teach them self-esteem so the kids can go on and do something productive for their community instead of something destructive.”

Until Espinoza gets his own ring, he will continue to drive eight miles to Hawaiian Gardens every Wednesday to use a ring in that city’s activity center. On one evening recently, the 36-year-old Espinoza arrived in Hawaiian Gardens with three young boxers in tow.

Espinoza had arranged for pudgy Nathan Barajas, 13, to spar against a taller, more experienced gym regular named Oscar Murillo. “This guy’s lighter than you so he’s gonna be quicker,” Espinoza warned Nathan, who heard about the boxing program from friends.

Nathan bounded eagerly into the ring, fully equipped with headgear, gloves and mouthpiece for three two-minute rounds. He was game but overmatched. His opponent landed crunching, audible blows to Nathan’s midsection and backed him up to the ropes with sharp, quick jabs to the head. By the third round, Nathan’s legs were wobbling, although he landed a few strong rights before the final bell.

“You haven’t been running, huh?” Espinoza said to Nathan as he unlaced his gloves. “See what happens when you don’t run?”

Nathan nodded.

Espinoza would like Nathan to train harder, but he is pleased that Nathan is standing up to challenges outside the ring. Earlier in the year, some youths at school had pressured Nathan to join their gang or they would “get him.”

“Well, then get me,” Nathan had responded, walking away.

Espinoza himself could not rise above the streets, gang life and drugs in time to salvage his own boxing career. The youngest of 12 children, he grew up in nearby Pico Rivera and was always fighting, spending time in juvenile detention halls and then in jail for short stretches. The fighting was his way “of trying to make a name for myself,” Espinoza recalled.

“I thought that making a living was living off the streets and being a conniver till I got out of school and found out there was more to life than banging heads,” he said. “I was bitter about life in general. I never had guidance. All I had was the guys on the streets.”

He got married, got hired as a driver for a market chain and finally, at the age of 27, stopped by a boxing club in downtown Los Angeles to work out.

Espinoza was fast and hit hard. After outclassing most of the local amateurs in sparring matches, he prepared to turn pro.

He said his sponsor backed out, however, just before his first pro bout. And then his boss said he had to choose between boxing and his delivery job. About the same time, Espinoza tried cocaine.

Thus began a four-year downward spiral that ended only after an overdose and a religious conversion that left him a “born-again” Christian. His marriage and his job survived the tailspin, but his boxing career did not.

Although the street-corner confrontation with the six boys was almost on impulse, Espinoza said he had been thinking of trying to do something for youngsters in his neighborhood and retaining a link with boxing. He has no children.

His two-car garage is decorated with pictures, some of them autographed, of Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and others. The phrase “Jesus is Love” is spray-painted across the garage door.

Taped to the wall are the fight cards of Espinoza’s young protegees. One promising fighter dropped out of training recently after becoming a father at 13. Espinoza hopes he will come back.

“I just ask them to stay clean,” Espinoza said of his boxers, who range in age from 5 to 16. “If they’re serious, I’m serious.”

Oscar Llamas, who won a state amateur title in the 118-pound weight class, dreams of turning pro. If he falls short in boxing, Llamas said he will study to be a mechanic or a nurse.

Like most of his friends, Llamas said he had experimented with drugs, cigarettes and alcohol by the sixth grade. “I don’t drink any more. I don’t smoke. When I’m feeling bad, I go out for a run. No parties any more. I don’t have time,” Llamas said.

He and the other boys return to Espinoza’s garage day after day despite the long runs and grueling workouts.

Boxing is only part of the attraction, Ray’s wife Cynthia explained. “It’s done with a lot of love,” she said. “That’s why the kids come back.”